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profanilseth

@profanilseth

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Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience & author: Being You - A New Science of Consciousness

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✨ Mediterranean Society for Consciousness Science (#MESEC) Winter School
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🧠 Feeling deeply grateful and inspired by so many bright, curious, and engaged young #minds. Their energy filled every moment —this wasn’t just theory, it was living practice.
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🌿 I had the joy of working alongside 4 wonderful on‑site tutors (@profanilseth @angelicakaufmann Michael Pereira & Krzys Dołęga) as well as our dedicated online tutors. We learned so much from one another —not only through the sessions, but through the rich conversations about #research, #consciousness, and everything in between.
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📸 A heartfelt thank you to the organisers (@siullips @emdawgydog @chewything @larifaryy Hector & Sai) and to @siullips for capturing the essence of this week through his beautiful photographs.
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🙏 And sincere thanks to the @templetonworld & @ibro_insta for making this experience possible

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Comment “ANIL” for the full episode.

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Anil Seth has a name for one of his worries about AI: cognitive attrition.

The more we let AI systems do our thinking, the less able we may be to think for ourselves, says the neuroscientist and author of Being You. He counts himself lucky that he had to learn with his own brain at school. If students use AI so that they never learn how to think in the first place, he expects real damage to society.

Full episode: link in bio

From deeptech INSIGHTS with @deraktionaer

#AI #Education #Learning #CriticalThinking

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Over the moon that CONSCIOUS has been longlisted for the BIFA Award for Best Debut Director – Feature Documentary!

Eight years in the making. I never imagined we’d be here when we started out, so thank you to everyone who has been part of this incredible journey.

Making this film meant navigating many unknowns: how to explore both consciousness and dementia in one film, how to work sensitively and ethically with people living with dementia, and how to create personal and traumatic dramatisations with contributors who had never acted before.

Looking back, we’ve overcome so many obstacles. There were many moments along the way when the path wasn’t at all clear.

A special thank you to my contributors for entrusting me with their stories, and to my wonderful production team for having the courage to step into the unknown with me. Together, we found our solutions, one step at a time.

@bifa_film @aconitedocs @profanilseth @winfield.maureen @screenscots @sundanceorg @britishfilminstitute @thedocsociety

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CONSCIOUS has been longlisted for the BIFA Award for Best Debut Director - Feature Documentary!

A very special milestone for director Suki Chan and everyone who has been part of this eight-year journey bringing CONSCIOUS to the big screen.

Independent filmmaking is an extraordinary collective effort. Huge thanks to our wonderful contributors, cast, crew, partners and funders for their generosity, creativity and belief in the film.

@bifa_film @aconitedocs @profanilseth @winfield.maureen @screenscots @sundanceorg @britishfilminstitute @thedocsociety

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Four fifths of the neurons in your brain sit in the cerebellum. It doesn't seem to be involved in consciousness at all.

Anil Seth, neuroscientist and author of Being You, says the wiring is the clue. The cerebellum mostly passes signals one way, much like today's deep learning networks. The cortex is full of loops. For him that is one line of evidence, and only one: if AI resembles any part of the brain, it's the part that isn't conscious.

Full episode: link in bio

From deeptech INSIGHTS with @deraktionaer

#Neuroscience #AI #DeepLearning #Consciousness

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Intelligence is about doing. Consciousness is about feeling, about being.

Anil Seth, neuroscientist and author of Being You, pulls the two apart. Many animals probably feel pain and joy without seeming very intelligent by our standards. With AI he sees the opposite: systems that behave in strikingly intelligent ways, while there may be nothing going on inside.

Full episode: link in bio
From deeptech INSIGHTS with @deraktionaer

#Consciousness #AI #Neuroscience #ArtificialIntelligence

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Some new friends from this past month 🤎🤎 excited to share them all with you soon 🤲🏽

Sometimes I feel I need to pinch myself that I get to do this for a living. I just feel incredibly lucky. It’s an honor & privilege to create space for these beautiful souls that have so much to offer the world. & thank you to everyone who tunes in. It really means so much to read the way these dialogues are supporting you on your journey of life. To many moreeee 🙃🙏🏽

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🎙️ Neue Podcast-Folge von deeptech INSIGHTS

Hat KI ein Bewusstsein? Der Neurowissenschaftler Anil Seth hält das für äußerst unwahrscheinlich. Im Gespräch mit Sascha Roehrer erklärt er, warum wir Sprachmodellen schnell ein Innenleben zuschreiben – und wo er die größere Gefahr sieht: bei KI, die nur bewusst wirkt.

Außerdem spricht Seth über KI-Partner, täuschend echte Avatare, Betrug an älteren Menschen, Wahrnehmung als „kontrollierte Halluzination“ und darüber, was seine Meinung ändern würde.

🎧 Die vollständige Podcast-Folge gibt es auf YouTube bei DER AKTIONÄR TV sowie unter „deeptech INSIGHTS“ auf Spotify und weiteren Podcast-Plattformen – auf Deutsch und Englisch.

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A simulation of a weather system doesn't get wet. Neuroscientist Anil Seth thinks the same holds for a simulated mind.

New episode: Anil Seth, author of Being You, on why today's language models are very unlikely to be conscious, and why AI that only seems conscious is the bigger risk.

Full episode: link in bio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also available in German!

From deeptech INSIGHTS with @deraktionaer

#Consciousness #DeepTech #AI #Neuroscience

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Thrilled to announce CONSCIOUS has been selected to screen at Fondazione Prada’s visionary Human Brains project.

Human Brains brings together neuroscience, culture and cinema to explore the complexities of the human brain and consciousness.

In her debut feature, Suki Chan crafts a sensorial and intimate journey into the human mind, weaving together the lived experiences of three remarkable women - Wendy Mitchell, Pegeen O’Sullivan and Maureen Winfield - with the work of renowned neuroscientist Anil Seth.

Exploring consciousness, identity and memory, the film considers what happens to our sense of self as the brain changes, and finds beauty, growth and resilience in places we might least expect them.

Written & directed by Suki Chan

🎵 Music by Dominik Scherrer, Ivor Novello Award-winning composer.

📍 Fondazione Prada, Milan
🗓 29 October 2026, 8PM
📌 Cinema Godard, L.go Isarco, 2, 20139, Milan

Followed by a Q&A with director Suki Chan and Professor Daniela Perani.

We’re deeply grateful to our partners, funders and collaborators who helped bring this film to life:

@aconitedocs @profanilseth @maureen.winfield @screenscots @sundanceorg @britishfilminstitute @thedocsociety @fondazioneprada

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“Anxiety doesn’t have a back, sadness doesn’t have sides, and happiness isn’t rectangular.” — Anil Seth   Well, not unless you find yourself at the Hospital of Emotions @hospital.of.emotions 👀🙃

Here is how our understanding of emotions has evolved over 140+ years: 
René Descartes proposed the idea of the bête-machine: nonhuman animals functioned like machines, without the rational minds he believed distinguished humans.

But over the centuries, our understanding of emotions began to change.

In 1884-1885, William James and Carl Lange proposed that emotions are not the causes of our bodily reactions, but the perceptions of them.

By the 1960s, appraisal theories brought another important perspective: bodily signals alone cannot fully explain our emotions. How we (i.e., our brains) evaluate a situation matters, too. A racing heart before stepping onto a stage might accompany anxiety, while similar bodily arousal on a roller coaster might accompany excitement.

This brings us to modern neuroscience, where neuroscientist Anil Seth turns Descartes’ idea on its head: we are beast machines, but that is precisely why we feel.

Consciousness and emotions aren’t simply products of abstract rationality. They are deeply rooted in our nature as living biological organisms whose brains constantly work to keep us alive.

From Seth’s perspective, the brain doesn’t simply register what happens inside the body. It continuously predicts and interprets bodily signals, helping regulate the organism and maintain the conditions necessary for survival.

And perhaps this is one of the most important things to understand about our emotions: what we feel is real, but what we think it means isn’t always right.

So next time an intense emotion hits, pause and ask yourself: What am I actually feeling in my body, and what meaning am I giving those sensations?

Inspired by @hospital.of.emotions & “Being You:A New Science of Consciousness” by @profanilseth

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